Day Care

I’ll get to writing more the actual content mentioned previously, but I am all in my feelings right now. I’m sitting here power pumping and pumping 4-5 times a day to make sure Robert has enough milk for day care tomorrow and to help increase my supply to meet his growing needs so we’re not supplementing with formula too often (more on that in my breastfeeding post.

Today sucks. My heart is hurting something fierce. This morning Robert started day care. In an ideal world, he’d stay home with a sitter or family member, but that’s not our reality, at the moment. We chose a very nice day care for him that had all the elements I, as a former child care director, wanted for him. They use a curriculum I am familiar with and a parent communication system I was working on bringing to our after school programs. But I am seriously missing my little buddy and our morning conversations, playtime, and cuddles. I know eventually we will be in a place where I can work part-time from home or on the weekends and spend more time dedicated to our little guy, but we have a couple financial goals to achieve before that happens.

We knew early on we were going to need to look into day care options. We ran into a bit of a struggle though when it came to several key things that were important to us. 1) We wanted somewhere that allowed him to grow at his own pace and didn’t move him up based solely on age. 2) We (read: Maggie) wanted a place with evidence-based curriculum and parental communication through an app. 3) We wanted a place that was not going to break the bank. 4) Location, location, location. We chose a day care that meets all four of those criteria near where Andrew works.

I read an article on Working Mother this morning, 12 Things You Should Never Say to a Day Care Mom. One that is not mentioned on there is, “So you’re ok with someone else raising your child?” or “You’re letting a stranger spend more time with your child than you will?” I say these because I have had people say the former to me, and having spent most of my career working with children, youth, and families; I am well aware of the fact that the staff of day care centers will spend more time with a child than their parents in a week. Knowing this information makes putting him in day care really hard for me because we’ve waited so long for him and my life experiences have taught me just how quickly children grow up and how easily the people in their lives at a young age, impact them the rest of their lives.

So yes, I am an emotional wreck because I have a week left until I return to work and the bliss of the past 11 weeks is quickly coming to a close. We are working towards a future where I have the option to stay home or work part-time, but we are still several months away from that. So today I am mourning this part of life and cleaning the kitchen to take my mind off of it. Tomorrow, I’ll work on another part of the house. Anything to keep my mind busy and off the fact I’m missing lazy morning snuggles, mid-afternoon pre-nap snuggles, seeing Andrew light up when he comes home from work, and pajama days.